PCA Chocolate Biz Card

Here is a weird, ephemeral piece of Porsche Club gear. A milk chocolate business car. It was sent to me by a friend from my old region, the Connecticut Valley Region. 

I myself am a La Maison du Chocolat man. The one bite you see is the one bite I took.

Pink Piglet?

Courtesy of the folks at break.com I found this pink Cayman. I have to say. On the track, this would be cool. On the street it is a little barbie.

It just needs some beef markings to be an homage to this 917.

I love Porsches in odd colors. My chiffon white SC is a rare color, but not super odd. The Brown metallic on my 83 944 is certainly odd. The paint to sample Polar Silver on my Boxster again is rare but not too odd.

I really want one of those crazy green 928s from 1978. Like this.

Changing 944 Coolant without Bleeding

Bleeding the coolant system on a 944 is tedious to say the least. And, in my opinion, something that should not be overdone as it can develop air bubbles that will cause temps to spike very high, very fast. You often have to jack the car from side to side, shake it, etc to get all the air pockets out. 

I posted a while back about an emergency bleed and fill with anti-freeze so that the all water system would not freeze up. I did a rush job and tested the coolant and it was only good to about 20 degrees. Not good enough here in Denver. 

So, I need to get a bunch more antifreeze in the system but did not want to do do it normally. I figured if I cracked the radiator drain just enough for fluid to flow out I could refill with undiluted antifreeze without getting any air in the system. It worked!

I too off the reservoir cap, cracked the drain (I just cracked it, I did not fully remove the drain as it would get out too fast) and let the car warm up. Probably took about 15 minutes to get a gallon of antifreeze in. I just watched as the level in the reservoir slowly went down, and kept adding a bit of antifreeze. Simple. 

Image thanks to Porsche AG website.

Push on aka Ready Seep Fittings

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I installed the Mocal oil cooler in my 944 about two months ago. It performed well in the 3-hour enduro I ran except for the fact  that is sprayed a fine mist of oil over the entire passenger side of my engine. 

Oil leaks are really frustrating. So I needed to track this one down.

At first, I tracked it down to one of the push on fittings that connected to the sandwich plate. I took off the offending house and redid the line with a new piece of aeroquip hose. Boiling water to soften the hose and making sure to push the fitting all the way on. Put this on the car. Fire it up. Now, a new leak.

This leak was where the adapter screwed into the sandwich plate proper. No instruction said to use thread sealant on this connection. But you should. Again, hose off. I did both adapters even though only one was leaking. Hoses back on. Warm it up again. 

Ahhhhhh! Another leak from the hose/connector connection. The oil just seeped past the barbs and out the top. I threw some hose clamps on as close to the end of the hose as possible. Still leaked. I went and bought two new fittings to see if this would do it. It didn't.

Now, I am determined to get this fixed so I go to Pirtek and am set to have them make up some heavy duty hoses. Well, their heavy duty options was Space Shuttle ready for sure but would never fit in the tight space I had. After an hour, really the guy I worked with was great, he just cut my aeroquip hose off and redid the hose with their pushon/socketless hose. Total cost, $1.28. Not kidding.

He also told me that "sometimes they just leak". And if I used a hose clamp to put it on the first, farthest away from the end, barb. Which was the opposite of where I was placing the clamp. Well, I did that, and for now, no  leaks. 

Pending good weather it will be race tested on November 1st. So what I learned about socketless fittings.

1. Use lots of lube/oil to get the fitting all the way to the end.

2. Put hose clamps as far down as possible on the fittings.

3. Be prepared to track down leaks and keep checking tightness.

picture from speedwaymotors.com

New(ish) Car WTF. First in a Series

It is too easy to make fun of the odd option or piece of trim on a vintage car. Things were not so focused group to perfection back then. There was some room to make a creative error. But in the past ten days big creative faux pas are hard to allow.

Take the hairsute, and if you don't know what hairsute means have the small children leave the room before googling, dash of the Nissan Cube.

I like the Cube. It is quirky. It is right sized. It looks fun. And fun is one thing that most cars are lacking. The outside of the cube is darling. As in dah-ling. Really, it is fun just to see one parked in the lot.

But the inside, to keep costs down of course, is a bit bland. The upholstery has a rather wind-whipped sand dune appearance. OK, there are lots of bad cloth interiors in cars. PASHA from Porsche not being one.

But on the dash of the cube is a curios oasis of carpet. As if the whole dash was rather furry and got a brazilian from the designers. What do you do with the fur pie? Rub it. Place your phone on it. Have it keep your bagel cozy warm. I really am at a loss.

So, next time you see a cube, peek inside. But don't blush, even though it is like looking up a woman's skirt.